Arctic Biologist Seth Beaudreault | This Past Weekend #221
Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts http://bit.ly/ThisPastWeekend_ Six months a year on the Alaskan frontier. Theo sits down with a guy that he’s only met through email to talk about nature and if the earth is going to be OK. Follow Seth http://www.instagram.com/sethbeaudreault/ Find Theo Website: https://theovon.com Instagram: https://instagram.com/theovon Facebook: https://facebook.com/theovon Facebook Group: https://facebook.com/groups/thispastweekend Twitter: https://twitter.com/theovon YouTube: https://youtube.com/theovon Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiEKV_MOhwZ7OEcgFyLKilw Producer Nick https://instagram.com/realnickdavis Music “Shine” - Bishop Gunn http://bit.ly/Shine_BishopGunn Gunt Squad www.patreon.com/theovon Name Aaron Rasche Adam White Alaskan Rock Vodka Alex Hitchins Alex Person Alex Petralia Alex Wang Alexa harvey Andrew Valish Angelo Raygun Annmarie Reilly Anthony Holcombe Ashley Konicki Audrey Hodge Ayako Akiyama Bad Boi Benny Ben Deignan Ben in thar.. Benjamin Herron Benjamin Streit Bobby Hogan Brandon Carla Huffman CharCheezy Christina Peters Christopher Becking Claire Tinkler Cody Cummings Cody Kenyon Cody Marsh Crystal Dakota Montano Dan Draper Dan Perdue Danielle Fitzgerald Danny Crook David Christopher David Smith David Witkowski Dentist the menace Diana Morton Dionne Enoch Doug C Dusty Baker Em Jay Fast Eddie Faye Dvorchak Felicity Black Gillian Neale Ginger Levesque Grant Stonex Greg Salazar Gunt Squad Gary J Garcia Jamaica Taylor James Briscoe James Hunter Jameson Flood Jeffrey Lusero Jenna Sunde Jeremy Siddens Jeremy Weiner Jim Floyd Joaquin Rodriguez Joe Dunn Joel Henson Joey Piemonte John Kutch Johnathan Jensen Jon Blowers Jon Ross Jordan R Josh Cowger Josh Nemeyer Joy Hammonds Justin Doerr Justin L justin marcoux Kennedy Kenton call Kevin Best Kirk Cahill kristen rogers Kyle Baker Lacey Ann Laszlo Csekey Lawrence Abinosa Leighton Fields Luke Bennett Madeline Garland Madeline Matthews Mandy Picke'l Mariah Marisa Bruno Matt Nichols Matthew David Meaghan Lewis Mike Mikocic Mike Nucci Mike Poe Mona McCune Nick Roma Nikolas Koob Noah Bissell OK Qie Jenkins Ranger Rick Robyn Tatu Ruben Prado Ryan Hawkins Ryan Walsh Sagar Jha Sarah Anderson Sean Scott Secka Kauz Shane Pacheco Shannon potts Shona MacArthur Stephen Trottier Suzanne O'Reilly Theo Wren Thomas Adair Tim Greener Timothy Eyerman Todd Ekkebus Tom Cook Tom Kostya Tugzy Mills Tyler Harrington (TJ) Vanessa Amaya Victor Montano Vince Gonsalves William Reid Peters Yvonne Zeke HarrisSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Today's guest is an Arctic biologist who has come down directly from the great white north to let us know exactly what's going on and to answer some questions we have about, well, all sorts of stuff.
We're going to get into nature.
We're going to get into the depths of the cold and Alaska.
Today's guest is Mr. Seth Boudreaux.
So do you just come from Alaska?
Right now coming from Costa Rica back up to Alaska.
I just went down to see my lady and spent some time at my place kind of in the middle of the work season.
Okay.
So basically five months a year in Alaska, May through September, studying migratory birds and wildlife.
And then the rest of the year I'm down in Costa Rica.
And yeah, because you sent me a picture from you sent me a picture one time of lunch, I guess it was, and it was some guana claws.
You guys had a batch of iguana.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I was like, dang, bro.
Yeah, my lady's dad traps them in the yard and cooks them up.
And it's not that great.
But yeah, if you're in a tight spot, someone will get you through.
Well, yeah, it looked when I looked at them, and we'll have Nick put the picture up too.
But they looked, I'd have thought you'd have eaten a different part of the iguana.
I'd never really considered really the claw.
Yeah, it was kind of all chopped up in there, but they're mostly bones, so it probably looked like a pot full of claws.
Yeah, that's what it looked like.
Yeah.
When you cook them up, how do you even cook those?
I think he cooked them in a pressure cooker with like a chopped tomato and some garlic and onion, maybe some chicken bouillon.
Pretty simple.
It's just kind of, you can cook it the same way you cook chicken.
Yeah.
But it's like, it's not that great.
Is it like an island treat kind of?
Is it pretty common there in Costa Rica?
No, I think a lot of rural people eat it occasionally, but a lot of people think it's gross and definitely don't eat it too.
Oh, yeah, it's kind of interesting.
Like it's almost like when I was growing up, people would eat a lot of like hogshead cheese and stuff.
And, you know, where my sister lived, they cook cracklings a lot of times where they'll just, you know, take a bunch of fat and put it in a pot.
That's the best.
Yeah.
At the beginning, you're like, where's the meat, you know?
And then by the end, you're just like...
Oh, and they look, yeah, and they're just turning tasty, really, and airy.
They're almost just, it's almost like, they're almost like cotton candy, like the inverse of cotton candy.
Exactly, yeah.
Crackling.
Pretty far on the other end of the spectrum.
So when you go up to, when you go to Alaska, what part of Alaska are you in?
In the Arctic, so north of the Brooks Range.
I'm at a science station.
Can you pull that up, Nick, the Brooks Range so we can see that?
I just want to have an idea where you are.
Yeah.
About 370 miles north of Fairbanks.
Yeah, and I don't even know where Fairbanks is, dude.
How far from Phoenix?
What I want to know.
Give me an idea.
The state looks like this, you know?
These are the Aleutian Islands.
Fairbanks kind of right in the middle, and I'm up towards the top there.
Okay.
Yeah, so I'm above north of that mountain range.
Oh, wow.
So that's called the North Slope up there.
That's where there's a lot of oil business going on and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
So it's, I mean, you are up there.
Yeah, it's about a 10-hour drive to get up to where I work.
And if you go off the top, say you get to the top of Alaska and you take a boat north, what do you hit?
The North Pole.
Eventually some ice.
Really?
Yeah.
And you can't really access the coast there without paying for a permit from the oil company to go on a tour.
You can go on like an hour-long tour where you get to dip your toes in the Arctic Ocean, but they don't want people messing around up there.
So you can't just access it on your own.
They kind of own the whole North Coastline there.
So it's private property.
Yeah, yeah.
There's a town called Dead Horse up there.
It's not really much of a town.
It's like an industrial outpost where everything's made of metal and there's just testosterone in the air.
Damn.
It's a rough place.
It's ugly.
But you can see some cool birds up there, spectacle eiders and phalaropes and king eiders and stuff.
It's pretty cool.
And now are those birds that are indeed, they're only there?
Spectacle eiders, yeah, are real Arctic specialists.
They didn't even really know where they spent the winter until pretty recently.
The whole population goes to like an opening in the ice out in the Bering Sea, I think.
How do you say it?
Spectacle eider?
Spectacled eider.
E-I-D-E-R.
And when you're up there, like how close are you getting to these birds?
Like what are you doing?
Too close.
My job, I'm a naturalist for this science station up there.
And so every day I'm out there just trying to document what's happening with wildlife, when the bird species arrive to the area, when they leave in the fall, and then other wildlife, you know, there's bears and wolves and wolverines and stuff up there.
So I'm just out there spending time trying to see what's going on and document it just for posterity, basically.
Oh, wow.
Isn't that crazy looking?
That's a bird, yeah.
Yeah, so it's a sea duck, and they just breed on the coast in grassy ponds and then spend the winter out among the sea ice and openings.
Can you get a picture of the head again, Nick?
Look at that thing.
Wow.
Yeah, what?
And so what is that?
Coming off the back, it almost looks like gills up there by its head.
Is that?
Or what is that?
It's just feathering?
Yeah, just weird feathers.
And can you have one of these at the house?
Are these more...
Yeah, they don't take kindly.
I think it's a threatened species, probably.
There's just not that many of them, and they breed in really specific areas.
And can you watch them fight or they don't fight?
What do they do?
They seem pretty docile to me.
They're just kind of sitting around on the water minding their own business.
You know, Arctic summer is really short, and so the birds kind of have to get there and get on with it, get the breeding done, and then get the hell out of there.
And that's when a lot of them do breeding is in the summertime?
Yeah, pretty much only then.
So we have like 110 species of birds we've observed in the area that are coming from the lower 48 states, Central America, South America, even all the way down to Antarctica.
Someone spend the winter down there.
So, birds kind of just come like everybody's kind of popping in.
Yeah, yeah.
Who's kind of the randiest group, you know?
Because sometimes you're like on a plane to Vegas and you got different groups.
You got a couple of German guys, you know, you got one guy making his own cocaine in the back seat.
You know, you got a bunch of Italians just, you know, drinking DECA 200.
You got guys really.
What kind of group gets up there and just really just turns it out?
There's a bird called the blue throat that is mostly a Eurasian bird, and the population just barely extends over into Alaska.
So you have to, if you want to see them in the United States, you have to go up there.
And they, yeah, look at that.
They sing bird karaoke.
They do like imitations of other bird species, and they'll do this repertoire that goes on for, they can imitate up to like 25 species of other birds.
But so you hear it, you hear them singing all this stuff, but it sounds a little off like karaoke where you're like, I don't think that's really the white-crowned sparrow, and it's that guy.
Oh.
And so they're just kind of, they're like impersonators on the post.
Yeah, totally.
And yeah, the females seem to get a kick out of the male with the biggest repertoire.
And, oh, wow.
That's pretty cool, huh?
Yeah, it's cool.
So bird birds are going to be like, I'm going to go up there.
Now, will they tempt other females from other species to come on over since they're using different people's songs?
I haven't seen them tempt females, but other species will definitely get agitated if they hear another bird singing their song because when birds sing, they're basically advertising their territory.
So they sing on the edges of their territory, and then the bird with the next territory over will hear it, and he'll kind of establish his border.
So if they suddenly hear their own song in a place where they thought they had their territory staked out, some of them definitely respond aggressively.
So when a bird sings, it's always to let people know that this is my territory?
That and I'm available.
So they're singing to let the females know that they've got this pad and they're ready to roll.
Oh, okay.
So I got a comfortable place here.
I got a little spot at the days in or whatever.
Got me a little spot at the Hampton in.
Got it for the summer.
Got to get out.
So those are the only two reasons.
If you hear a bird, they're letting somebody know about their territory or they are letting females know that they're available.
Yeah, pretty much.
And is it just male birds that sing or female birds also sing?
Mostly just male birds sing and females do little calls that they use to keep in touch with each other and to warn each other of predators and stuff.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm waiting for this one bitch to text me back right now, dude.
It's only been two weeks, so she's probably busy, you know, traveling or something.
Yeah.
How cold, so when you get up to Alaska, man, how cold is it?
Like, because people think of Alaska, and you know, like a lot of people, you think of like gold country and that sort of thing.
You think of it being cold.
Is there a level where it doesn't matter that it's cold anymore that you can't even, like, we can't even really feel a difference between, say, you know, 20 degrees below and like 80 degrees below?
20 degrees below is not bad at all.
When you get down to 40, I think 50 below is the lowest I've experienced.
Then you're just in pain.
You just don't want to be outside at all.
Yeah.
So down to minus 20, it's very dry up there, at least in Fairbanks.
And so you can still go skiing and stuff and have an alright time.
But when it gets colder than that, like you can feel a breeze coming underneath the bottom of your cabin door just because the temperature difference is so great that the air is just like blowing in, trying to equal it out.
So explain that to me.
I don't know what you're talking about saying exactly.
When there's differences in temperature, wind is basically air moving from one place to another, right?
That's kind of a ridiculously simple way to describe wind.
Yeah, I get it.
I think we all understand that.
Now we do.
But like when there's a big difference inside and outside, the air is trying to equalize to normal it out.
Okay.
So you have these like 10-inch thick walls of a cabin or even the doors that usually have several inches of insulation.
But just at the bottom, the only space where there's a little bit of air, it's just blowing in like your pants will go like this in the wind if you're standing near the door.
Because the air's coming in.
It's so much colder outside than it is inside if you have it at 60 inside that it just creates wind just trying to rush that close to each other.
Yeah, yeah.
Wow.
But when I get up there in early May, and that's when it's still winter a little bit, there's usually a few feet of snow on the ground, but it's already full daylight, so I don't see the sunset until September.
So the sun's up the whole time when you get there from May?
Yep.
Yeah.
Which, yeah, as I get older, it gets harder to be used to that.
Like we have blackout curtains, you know, to try to make it dark in my room and stuff, but you can't keep it out, the light a little bit.
So yeah, it's kind of still winter a little bit in early May, and that's when the birds start to arrive to the area.
So I'm out there all day, like just visiting the same types of habitat and trying to keep track of when each species arrives to the area.
Oh, you're like a concierge almost.
Yeah, just trying to help them get settled in.
So you do that for years and years and years, and then you have a nice record of exactly what was happening, you know, in any given year.
and you can track changes over time, and that's kind of how the good kinds of science work, But I'm just studying very basic, like, what are the animals doing?
And I really love that because I've just always been more of a generalist where I like being outside and just paying attention to stuff rather than have my nose in the tundra sniffing gases or whatever they're doing.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, you're not as much of a corporate hunter.
Right, yeah, yeah.
Freelance.
Yeah.
Yeah.
When they when you start to see like different patterns from birds, like is there a time when you like really start to get scared?
Like is there one species that you really start to pay attention to?
Yeah, there's uh there's a couple times that birds have frightened me a little bit.
Um, there's a bird called a long-tailed Jaeger that, um, it's a seabird, basically.
It's kind of like a gullish, turn-ish type of bird, but they're a predatory seabird.
And they only come inland to breed on tundra.
Yeah, that one.
Oh, wow.
So they eat voles and lemmings and stuff.
And when there aren't a lot of lemmings or voles around, those populations kind of crash occasionally.
And when there's not any around, they'll just form groups of like 40 and just maraud around.
And one time I saw a group of 40 just coming over a hill and there was kind of a thundercloud in the distance.
And I was like, I didn't know that they did that yet.
It's like, why are these 40 birds coming at me?
It's pretty gnarly.
Yeah.
We thought maybe they teamed up when we're coming to get you.
I thought there was a tsunami coming or something.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
You spend enough time out there, you see weird things like that that most people, you know, don't know happen.
Yeah.
I mean, animals are so in tune with Mother Nature, they're almost like, it's almost like they're like working for Mother Nature or something.
Yeah, I guess.
Or like you could get clues from them, you know?
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
I learned a lot about us from watching them.
And I think that's one of the great things about doing that kind of work is just being out there and having the opportunity to be away from all the other noise that's going on and just watch other things and have time to think.
And yeah, I've been doing it for 17 years now.
So like ever since I've been an adult.
And is it a lifestyle that you think you could get that you would want to go away from?
Or do you start to like look forward?
I mean, do you really just look forward to that time up there?
Oh, yeah.
I mean, I'm away from my girlfriend, fiancé for those five months, which is why I go down and visit in the middle of that for 10 days.
So it's really great to see her.
And that's a cost, you know, like it's definitely an alternative lifestyle.
And a lot of couples, I don't think, could pull it off long-distance relationship.
But we've been going nearly six years now.
And it's really great.
I would love it, man.
Oh, can't see you for four months.
Still love you, though.
For me, it would be great.
I mean, yeah, it would just be, I think it's almost something I'm going to have to have in my life.
I'm trying to think of like something that I think about, like, how quiet does it get?
It must get extremely quiet, huh?
It gets so quiet that you can hear your own heartbeat, like in your ears.
Yeah, where there's no other sound, especially when there's no wind or anything.
And you don't, yeah, being here, I'm in the belly of the beast here.
Yeah, especially LA.
Yeah.
Oh my God.
Flying in, everybody else seems to think it's fine, but I'm looking out there like, this is so wrong.
Now, when you say that, is it just like the amount of people, the amount of like goings on in one space, like the lack of space?
What?
Yeah, just humans living so out of balance with nature and just everything that's here, we depend on someone else somewhere else making and doing, you know, like it's kind of weird.
Yeah.
And I don't think it's good for us, really.
Like having watched animals for so long, you kind of realize like we are just another animal.
We are an ape.
We're not special.
We're not even domesticated.
Like we're as wild as we ever were.
We just have changed our habitat a lot, you know, to suit us.
But it comes at such a great cost that when you're outside of this stuff and have the peace and time to kind of get out of it and then you come back to it, it's pretty shocking.
Wow.
Yeah.
But it's like, you know, if you're in a bad relationship and your buddy could come up and tell you why you should get out of it, you can listen and it makes logical sense maybe, but you come up with excuses for why you're just not going to do it yet.
And then years later, when you do, you look back and you're like, what the hell was I thinking?
That's what's going on?
Yeah, just because I had that chance to be outside of this human civilization kind of.
And so you get a different perspective, I think.
But I can't expect to make people understand that in the same way that when you're in a bad relationship, like someone could explain something personally.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's hard to see something when you're in it.
Yeah.
So it's nice to like down in Costa Rica, you know, I'm living in a tiny little village.
It's 200 people and there's no other gringos around except for a couple families of Mennonites.
But like, yeah.
They're wild, huh?
They're bacon over there.
They've got a little bakery and they're pretty interesting.
They called, I got a Facebook message from someone I didn't know the other day saying the Mennonites want you to call them.
Gang, bro.
And I'm like, what do the Mennonites need me for?
And it was a bird identification question.
I saw a bird that wasn't in the book.
And I'm like, yeah, it's a southern light.
It's like Thanksgiving over there with those Mennos, man.
It's beautiful.
And they're pretty self-sufficient, those cultures, aren't they?
Like Mennonites and Amish?
In a way, yeah.
The Mennonites are kind of weird where they use cell phones.
They don't use the internet, but they'll use cell phones.
They use motors.
They're not like the Amish in that sense.
They're really nice, but you feel a little weird around them because the women are covered, you know, from head to toe.
And I kissed an older Mennonite lady on the cheek by accident because that's a custom in Costa Rica when you say goodbye to someone.
Yeah, yeah.
And as I got closer, I kind of realized like she doesn't want this to happen, but I'm into it.
That's most of us.
There's a lot of Gianni and Nick sexual history.
Yeah.
A lot of that going on in here.
But yeah, so being in these quiet places, it's great when people visit.
Like I've got a lot of good buddies I grew up with who have come down to the places.
Just to hang out in Alaska.
Oh, to Costa Rica.
A few have come up to Alaska, but I don't get that much time off up there.
So yeah, my seven months a year off is down in Costa Rica, and that's where people come visit and can kind of like, I think they, before they visit, they imagine me laying in a hammock on the beach drinking imperial or something.
But When they come down and see we're living in like a really small rural agricultural village, we're growing coffee.
So you got to do a lot of stuff.
There's a lot of action.
Yeah, which is that's kind of the best way we can be is just doing work that's meaningful to you, to people around you.
Yeah, I can imagine the exchange, the human exchange you get by helping others or being part of a small community.
Yeah, yeah.
That's how we're evolved to be, you know, like we're supposed to be living in tribal groups of, you know, up to 100 or 150.
And then we've gotten so far away from that that I don't think we can see our way back.
But do you think there could be a correction that happens that brings us back?
Like sometimes I feel like that's the thing that I'm wondering.
Like does Mother Nature finally be like, all right, enough of this Sims bullshit, you know?
Yeah.
I'm about to tighten up the shit.
I think it's unavoidable.
It happens to every other species on Earth.
Every other species population goes up and down and up and down.
Really?
Yeah, I mean like lynx and snowshoe hares, their populations kind of follow each other.
As the hair population gets high, the lynx start producing more kittens and then the start eating all the hares and start dying off and then the lynx have to die off.
Everything else goes like that.
And if you look at a graph of the human population since like 1700, we've just gone and we've done it by, you know, like advances in agriculture and medicine and everything, which some of them are great, but we can't keep going forever.
Yeah, like how sustainable is it?
It's not at all.
So that's hard to watch happening and that no one gives a shit.
Right.
I'm lucky the time I've had to be out in the wild and get that perspective, but it makes it harder to be in the civilized world because no one else knows what the hell I'm talking about.
Oh yeah, you start to look like an alien.
Yeah, yeah.
You start to seem like something that's, it starts to seem like you're the odd man out.
Right, exactly.
Where when really it's kind of the other way.
I mean, I think especially in America, we don't notice that there's more like rural living in a lot of other cultures.
Yeah.
We don't realize that like in the whole globe, that there's tons of it going on.
Yeah, like when people are talking about how we're going to have smart cars driving everybody around here, the rest of the world has no idea that's even being discussed.
Right.
Except for in big cities, maybe.
But like, yeah, it's not.
It's funny.
I go to Illinois in the summer and they have a small town up there and they don't even get 4G.
Like it's 3G is what you get on your phone.
So it's like, if you want to watch a video, dude, you got to drive with your buddy, you know, 19 minutes, you know, and park outside the McDonald's to catch enough freaking phone heat.
So it's like those people aren't even worried about, and it's more like an agricultural environment in that area.
Yeah.
And they're not worried about it.
Everybody else looks down on them, you know?
Yeah.
Like they produce the food we eat.
They do all this stuff that we kind of tried to get away from having to do ourselves.
Yeah.
And then we look down on them.
It's so wrong.
It is crazy.
I mean, especially like a lot of like median stuff these days.
You know what I mean?
Even Alaska, I'm sure.
I mean, CNN hates anything that's white, it seems like.
So I'm surprised that they even surprised they're not Alaska deniers.
But yeah, it is.
I guess it's like, I mean, you have such an interesting insight into that because you get to see what, it's like you're almost living in two different realms.
Totally, yeah, yeah.
And just occasionally passing through this one and just being like, what the hell is going on, you know?
Wow.
Wow.
Because your layovers are here on your way back to Costa Rica.
Basically between these two kind of remote areas, I pass through places like this.
And so I'm away for long enough where things have changed since I last came through and I can see them.
And most of them are alarming.
Wow.
Like the Uber drive over here is scarier than any bear encounter I've ever had.
I agree.
That's a good call.
I mean, like, it's way more dangerous being on a highway here than being up there.
And now, so do you just, you must notice so many just like small, like, do you notice that you are alarmed at a personal level or do you notice that you are alarmed at a natch, at a level of like, you know, tension in your body or things like that from being in the city, like for on the Uber drive, for example?
Yeah, both for sure.
Like, I definitely feel way more in danger just because we're supposed to know everybody that we interact with.
That's how our brains have been for hundreds of thousands of years.
So to be in a place where I've got a couple buddies I grew up with that I visit when I'm here.
Other than that, everybody's a stranger.
Yeah, it is kind of wild to think of how many strangers you run across and run past.
Yeah.
So, and like people are great generally, but you just, I think evolutionarily, in the back of your mind, you're not at ease, or at least I'm not, you know?
Yeah.
And I think, you know, we're an ape, but we're obviously super adaptable.
So most people have adapted to deal with that pretty fine.
And yeah, not me.
Do you feel like we're definitely apes?
You have no doubt about it?
No doubt, yeah.
Anybody who thinks we're not just hasn't thought about it enough, I think.
But don't you think, man, you got to think if we're an ape, like, I've never looked at an ape.
Like, for example, I've never been to the zoo and been like, you know, miss the old place, you know?
Like, nowhere in my body does that reflect.
And I'm not saying, I think maybe we might be monkeys that God created, you know?
Like, I think maybe.
I mean, do you think we're really an ape?
Have you ever smelled your armpit like after a nice hike?
Yeah, a little bit when I was younger.
Yeah.
I mean, I get the hang of it now, kind of, but...
Yeah, I mean, like, you watch how we behave in groups and...
Exactly as apes.
Like, it's a miracle anytime we act above an ape, I think.
It's a miracle.
Yeah.
And it doesn't happen that often.
Oh, the more that I always try to give people the benefit of the doubt, and then I'll go around to different places and I'm like, damn, it's really hard to keep doing this.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, like we will constantly let each other down.
Yeah, yeah, it's terrible.
But that's because there's so many of us so crowded in that we don't mean anything to each other.
Yeah, that's a, and that's a great statement.
That's exactly what I feel like here all the time, yeah, you know.
So, when you're in a small community where you're kind of interdependent, that's how we're programmed to function.
Like in a group of apes, non-human apes or human apes, like everybody's supposed to have a role, and everybody kind of does something that contributes to the group every day.
So, in larger cities, you're going to have a lot of people that they don't, they may have a role, but they're, it's not as prominent or it's not as defined or maybe they can't find their role.
Yeah, it's yeah, we're you probably then create a lot of depression, I would bet.
Exactly, yeah.
So, it's not surprising to me at all how much depression there is and how people are so disconnected.
It's totally logical.
Right.
You know, because we're in, no, I like thinking about this.
It's interesting.
Yeah, because in cities, it's so funny when I go home or I go someplace else, even when I go to other places in the U.S. even, I just feel so much, the second I leave here, I feel so much more relaxed.
Yeah.
Yeah, man.
It just, I just feel better.
Yeah.
You know, I just feel like, yeah, I don't know.
I just don't feel like I have to just, I feel like I have to fight so hard here to just be a person.
Yeah.
You know, you do.
And it's just taxing after a while.
It's real frenetic here.
There's no quiet.
There's no darkness at night.
There's all the light pollution.
Like, it's so against how we spent so much time being just in this recent fraction of modern times is the only time we're going to be.
That we're like this.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's gotten so fast, too.
What do you think are going to be some of the side effects of some of this that we're going to see?
I mean, obviously we're seeing a lot of them now with like depression.
You know, people not feeling like they fit into the world, which makes sense.
It's like, how could you feel like you fit in when there's so many people all clogged together and our genetics haven't really caught up to this new way of living?
Yeah.
Yeah, I don't know, man.
That's the thing is I have no answer for it, even after all this time.
It still boggles my mind and I see no way out of it other than just each person trying to do good things where they can on a scale that they can see the results of.
Oh, yeah.
So like these, we always think of these problems as big global issues, but they're local issues just piled on top of each other.
And they're all results of individual people's decisions.
Yeah, I think that way all the time.
Yeah.
You can't solve a big global issue.
You can just see work that needs to be done, do it, and hope that you live to see the results or that your kids do or something.
But even that, we're being an ape, we're not programmed to think that far.
Possibly be an ape.
It's still up for debate.
I mean, it's just like, here's the thing, dude.
I never seen an ape and been like, oh, yeah, you know.
Really?
My buddy.
Really?
Fuck no, dude.
Fuck no, I haven't.
You got to go to the zoo again, man.
Bro, I've been over there, man.
I've been over there.
But I never seen an ape.
Yeah, not once have I looked at an ape and been like, oh, man, yeah.
Wonder what the boys are up to.
Fuck no, man.
I'm not saying that it's not a possibility.
But you're out in nature.
You're out in the expanse of probably some of the most beautiful places you could probably see.
Is that true or is it just disgusting?
Like, is it barren up there?
And is it miserable?
It's both.
Okay.
Yeah.
Like the mosquitoes in Alaska in the summertime, I don't know if you know, but it's insane.
Oh, yeah.
Like you have to wear.
That's not a racial story.
He's talking about the actual animal.
Yeah.
You have to wear head nets and stuff.
Really?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
But there's no humidity, right?
It's pretty dry, but with all the snow melt that melts in the spring and the mosquitoes have laid their eggs in those areas and they kind of start hatching out.
There's videos that have been shot up where I work where you will not believe the amount of mosquitoes.
Oh, you got to go to Jefferson Parish, dude, in Louisiana, bro.
They have that.
I mean, we go toe-to-toe with you contest.
Where we bring our mosquitoes and you bring yours there.
And we watch them fight or something over there in arena.
Then they hybridize.
Yeah, look at that.
You have it.
Wow.
Oh, my God.
This looked like a big RG or something.
It is.
Yeah.
But, well, hold on a second because there's two things I'm thinking.
One, are mosquitoes like little bitty birds?
I know they're insects, but are they similar to birds or not?
They fly, and some people say it's the Alaska State bird, you know, some bumper stickers of that on us.
Okay.
That's evidence, right?
But as far as like genetically, and like, are they similar?
Not really.
No.
Okay.
Kind of buzzkill a little.
No pun intended.
Yeah.
Wow, Nick, fucking spicy there today.
No pun intended on the buzzkill, man.
That's good.
And I repeated it because some of our listeners still didn't get it.
That's the only reason.
And I don't think if I fully got it.
But that's a fair point.
Like, there's great beauty up there.
It's magnificent landscape.
But wouldn't that beauty make you think like, okay, there's a higher power?
There's something creating.
I mean, yeah, there's something bigger going on.
There's something creating all this.
Yeah, I don't know.
I just, with that question, I always just end up saying, I don't know, and I don't know if it even matters.
Like, here we are.
Right.
Right.
It's a good point.
Yeah.
Like, basing your whole existence on that seems kind of intense.
Yeah, I'm thinking that you know which one of the many thousands of answers is the right one.
It's kind of weird.
But do you, but when you, when you're in some of those spaces and it's so natural and it's so quiet and you have the ability to even hear your own heartbeat, like it must be like almost like a really intense meditation that goes on at like a core level or at like a level of even your cells that you can't even really fathom, probably a level of like peacefulness and stuff.
Yeah.
Do you, Does that make you feel like what insight do you get to is there like something bigger going on here or is there do you feel like a part of something bigger or do you just feel like really small?
Does it you you definitely feel more part of the big picture, but you also feel small small because you are a tiny part of a giant picture, you know?
So because especially if you're studying nature and stuff like that, you're really you're right there on the food chain.
I mean, you're basically, you know.
And yeah, I've been charged by polishing the food chain, really.
I've been charged by bears, musk ox.
I had an incident with a swan, you know.
What do you mean you had an incident with a swan?
I mean, I've had I've had, I mean, I've had a couple.
I had some fucking shit go off in Oregon one time, but, you know, I was trying to jog in these.
Dude, when some of those animals group up, they get real violent.
They do, yeah.
It's like Antifa almost or something.
You know?
Yeah.
Yeah, they definitely find strength in numbers.
And you went toe-to-toe with the swan up there?
I went hand to neck with a swan.
You killed it?
Yeah.
Yeah, I choked it out.
Damn, boy.
That's what I'm saying, dude.
Poor over Khabib, bro.
That's what I'm going with right there.
It nearly got the best of me, though, really.
They're like this tall.
Yeah.
And the wings are probably more than six feet across.
Oh, yeah.
And yeah.
Jesus.
Yeah.
And what do they do?
How do they come in?
Like, what's their attack?
They're mostly bodywork.
Is it really?
Yeah.
How is that not a fucking sport?
There have been so many, dude.
I remember they used to have this group in a, you know, I use this term, I don't know, loosely or however I use it, but they used to have a group that would come through our college in town called, it was fag fist fights, right?
And it was gay men that would fist fight each other in a boxing ring.
And you'd pay for it at the bar.
You'd pay $6 or something.
You got a beer and you got to watch these guys go at it.
But I would pay anything to watch, you know, a biologist and a four and a half foot swan.
Figuring things out.
Go toe-to-toe, dude.
Yeah.
So a lot of, do they strike at you?
What do they do?
They nip at you with the beak?
Yeah, I got it by the neck right away so it couldn't get me with the beak, but it was hissing at me.
Nick wants to bet on this.
Nick loves to bet on fights.
And the fact that it went to the body first, that's always the best strike.
Yeah, I was taken aback.
But yeah, so I had it by the neck and it was beating me with its wings.
And it's kind of disorienting.
That's a good term, disorienting.
Does it feel like painful or does it feel like scary?
Kind of scary just because I thought I had shot it once and that was the last bullet we had.
Where'd you shoot it?
You just shoot it point blank or how'd you shoot it?
No, it was in the back.
Jesus Christ, dude.
Like the coward of Jesse James.
Have you seen that movie?
Man, sorry to call you out, dude, but damn.
I know, but dude, we had no more food and we had another week to go out there.
So what are you going to do?
Love how I feel you.
Oh, the assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford.
Yeah, I know.
I'm not proud.
Not proud.
You shot him in the back.
It was trying to get away.
So your food was that vital at that point.
Yeah.
I mean, we had this guy, this pilot was supposed to fly over, drop off two dry bags full of food.
And he was supposed to get 100 feet off the water, but because of the weather, he was 500 feet up.
So these dry bags hit the water, exploded.
Denzel Washington right there.
I've seen that.
So all we could salvage, we ran out into the river and were trying to grab what we could, but it was going away pretty quickly.
We got a small bottle of whiskey that the pilot had included for us just to be nice.
Wow.
And a couple fruit cups, I think.
And so that's your rations for what, the next week?
It would have been, yeah, yeah.
A week and a half, I think.
So now you're like, damn.
Yeah, we're in trouble.
And we were, you know, probably a couple hundred miles outside of Fairbanks, I think.
So there's no getting out of there.
And we're up a tiny little river where you have to float all the way down to get to a place where a plane, a float plane, can come get you.
And so yeah, we just had to start hunting grouse and geese and ducks and whatever there was.
But we had a limited, we weren't planning on hunting.
We have guns for bear protection.
So we didn't have that many bullets, you know?
Yeah.
So you had to, did you guys miss a couple times?
No, no, we're pretty good.
And is it a pistol you walking right up on them and shooting them in the back?
Or is it you shotgun?
It was a shotgun.
Okay.
Yeah.
Jesus, man.
Yeah.
And we were.
It kind of makes me sad a little.
Yeah.
Some grouse out there chilling, dude, you know, maybe having a cigarette or just relaxing.
Yeah, looking at the foliage.
Yeah, thinking about owning land one day and you fucking just come up and blow him in the back.
Gross aren't that smart.
Like, yeah, I've hunted them before and they'll get into a tree and they don't realize that they don't blend in with the tree.
They blended in when they were on the ground, but then they're in a tree and you can pretend like they're blending.
They think they still blend in and they're like, I see you.
That's the story of my life.
They think they're all slick looking at you.
Yeah.
Now, what about the fox, man?
We had a fox in school when I was young and somebody stole it, right?
And I knew it was going to happen.
But what about the fox?
Are they out there still?
Yeah, there's red foxes up there, the occasional Arctic fox.
Wow, it's good to hear, man.
They're cool to see.
You watch them hunting voles through the snow in the spring and they're walking along on top of the snow and then they'll cock their head and kind of triangulate the sound.
They're hearing the vole moving under the snow.
Then they pop up into the air and dive into the snow and probably six times out of ten, they come up with the vole.
It's like Iwo Jima, dude.
Have you guys seen that D-Day or whatever?
That's insane, man.
Is that one of the most unique hunting techniques that you see out there?
Definitely, yeah.
Yeah, that's one of the few species I've actually got to see hunting.
Even all this time up there, I've seen wolves chasing a caribou once.
Wow, look at that fox.
And they're good jumpers, huh?
Yeah.
People don't realize that.
They're like the Greg Lugainis of the Animal Kingdom.
Look at that.
So they hear the rodent under the snow.
Yeah.
And then they get that lift and just hit him.
Yeah.
Damn.
Yeah.
They triangulate the location, and then I don't know how.
They do that math in their head, huh?
Wow.
It's pretty wild.
Now, what are some of the larger animals that you'll see up there in the area that you're in?
Grizzly bears, the occasional moose, musk ox, caribou.
Those are the big ones.
Which ones are the most friendly do you find to like to humans?
Or even maybe overall?
Some of them can seem friendly.
Like a dog can seem real friendly.
Are any of those larger animals you see up there friendly?
Caribou aren't unfriendly.
You can trick them to come closer to you by putting your arms up and it kind of looks like a pair of antlers.
And either their eyesight's not that good or they're not that bright, but they'll start walking towards you, wondering if they're going to fight you or try to copulate.
Oh, yeah.
It's like a drunk uncle almost, I feel like.
That's what I see, like a little, you know?
Yeah.
So caribou, you can kind of get near.
Yeah.
Musk ox, you can get near.
They don't know what's going on.
They're just eating vegetation and staying put pretty much.
They don't move a lot.
Do you get a sense of an ice?
Do you get a sense of what the ice age was like and stuff when you're up there?
Do you start to get a sense of what people have gone through over history and stuff like that?
Yeah, you'll find not only fossils from 300 million years ago of coral and stuff when it used to be under the ocean up there.
Yeah.
But then you'll also very rarely find artifacts from native folks from 10,000 years ago or whatever.
I found a little spearhead sitting on top of this little knoll.
I went up there because it looked like a good viewpoint and I'm sitting there looking for animals and stuff and then I see sitting next to me this spear point.
So someone else thought it was a good viewpoint also 10,000 years ago.
No one else went up there since.
Wow.
Yeah.
That's crazy.
Yeah.
So, yeah, it's amazing knowing that it's so human.
Something like that is very human.
I've had it like a, yeah, like a, I would feel so like, wow, like I'm a part of something very long.
Yeah.
And then you go back to the station and eat ravioli or something and you don't lose a connection.
You're like, man, you cut that microwave on and it really kind of shuts down those inner beacons, huh?
Yeah, I guess it's like, it's hard to not be stuck sometimes, though, in this society that we're in.
That's the thing, though.
Do you blame humans?
Do you blame businesses?
Do you blame, is there any blame?
Is it just where we are kind of like, and this isn't everyone, obviously this is more cities than rural areas.
Yeah, I think it's the natural tendency for most animals to try to make their situation easier, not necessarily better, or maybe in a certain definition, but easier.
Like if a dog gets unlimited food, they'll might just eat themselves into obesity, right?
Yeah.
And it's not good for them, but they might, if they could articulate their thoughts, they might be like, well, there's all this food.
It'd be good if I ate it.
You know, maybe there won't be later.
So I think every little incremental change along the way has seemed like a benefit to us.
And it has been in a sense, but there are always unforeseen effects that come off of it that you can't predict.
And by the time they're really prevalent, you're already too far used to the thing that you can't really think about going back.
You know what I mean?
Ah, yeah.
Yeah, if you get used to like doing Halloween and they tell you no, exactly.
Dude, you're going to be fucked.
You're still going to be, you'll lay on the porch forever, you know, just expecting candy.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
So that's the hardest thing.
I can totally see that.
And it's really interesting because then even as humans, we have the addictive personality.
Yeah, totally.
We have the ability, the easy ability to like that sugar lizard that just gets with, you know, just grasp the easiest first thing.
Yeah.
It's like you really have to fight that instinct these days in order to get to a more natural state of yourself.
Yeah.
And most people aren't interested in that at all, like would never spend five minutes even thinking about it.
Right.
Isn't that baffling sometimes?
It is, yeah.
Because I think a lot of times that we're all on this struggle where we're trying to, we're trying, we're trying our best, you know?
We know that some of the stuff you're saying, we get it.
We can feel it.
You know, we know that I'm taking these easy way outs here and there, and I know it's not benefiting me at like a level inside of me.
But then you see some people and you're like, oh, they don't stand a chance.
Not this, maybe their next generation or two might, but whoever this person is, you know, I've seen some people wander around a gas station sometime like, oh, this dude, you know, he'll stay in here forever, dude.
He's going to eat one of those hot dogs.
Yeah, bro.
He's going to eat 100 of them.
You know, this dude will be in here forever.
Yeah.
You know, this dude will lay on the grill after a while.
Think it is a tanning booth.
Oh, he's going to change his name to Frank.
Yeah, it just never ends, bro.
This dude will feed himself to his own family.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, it's just, you meet people that are like, and it's not their fault, really.
It's just maybe where they are genetically.
Yeah.
It's like, oh, they're.
Or it's the culture where if everybody's doing this one thing, it's so hard to go against the grain.
And that's the biggest part of the trouble is that the way I talk about things, a lot of people say like, what do you want to go back to the 1700s?
No.
Like there were good things we gave up along the way that we shouldn't have given up.
Like the great things we've come up with in medicine.
Yeah, like witchcraft, I think, bro.
Yeah.
To be honest with you.
Probably better.
I don't know why I keep looking at these guys and not laughing at any of my jokes either.
I'm joking.
You're doing a good job.
Gianni's not.
Yeah, it's true.
We've created a real totalitarian environment here that we're not very proud of sometimes.
But so isn't it crazy to think then that survival of what will be the fittest then moving forward?
Is it people that are able to realize that not to give in to all the comforts that are able to have some awareness?
Yeah.
Or what is the next survival of the fittest?
Because survival of the fittest used to be, it was the strongest.
Right.
And it was often sometimes the craftiest, too.
Yeah, definitely.
But you had to also, like, you had to align yourself with somebody that was strength because you would need that support.
But now I'm wondering what it's becoming in our society in America anyway.
Yeah.
I feel like we're adapted to get the next generation going, but not really anything beyond that, which logically we shouldn't be programmed to think that far into the future because every other animal just tries to get the next generation out and then they've done their part, you know.
Forget what the hell where I was going with that.
That's fine.
It has to be in the middle of every sentence, dude.
Imagine running into a room to tell people something and forget what it was.
Just looking excited.
That's how I feel every single sentence.
It's like, tonight, dude, it's going to be good.
And then you're just standing there with a murder weapon in your hand.
You're like, fuck, man.
I need a preposition.
You know?
It's a little alarming.
What do you guys got over here?
Nick, Gianni, what's going on?
When you're up in Alaska away from people that long, and then you come back, do you find it hard to communicate with people?
A little bit, yeah.
I think because I work alone most of the time up there and I have my thoughts, you know, on Tumble Dry up top.
Yeah, it can be weird trying to articulate these kind of ideas, I guess.
Do people seem stupid?
That's a great question.
Yeah, do people seem stupid when you come back to us?
Like when you come back to like, you know?
No, like, it's not stupid at all because you guys are well adapted to your situation here, you know?
Like, maybe not long-term as a species, but everybody's just kind of doing what they got to do, you know?
And LA is a short-term environment.
I feel like it screams that.
Yeah.
Like people are here passing through to get enough to get to the next, whatever they would rather be doing or an environment that would be more comfortable.
It's really a almost for all for the entire world, this is almost just like an airport, it feels like.
It is, yeah.
You know, it even never ends.
It feels like we're still in just like a very far terminal of the airport right here.
We're a podcast.
And even when I'm at my apartment, it feels like that.
I'm like, man, I just never leave the airport.
Yeah.
You know, it just never ends here.
What is amazing about LA is how quickly you can get way away from here.
Like the hike I went on yesterday with my buddy up in the San Gabriel Mountains, I guess.
Was it Eagle Rock or something?
It was Dawson's Saddle up to Thouop Peak, I think.
Damn.
Which is up at like 9,700 feet.
It's gorgeous up there.
We maybe passed 10 people on the trail in four or five hours.
That's why that was busy.
It was, yeah.
It's like this place is bumper to bumper.
But you can get up to that peak and look, you can have a 360 view of everything way out to, I don't know if it's Palmdale where it's just flat desert out that way.
I've been to Eagle Rock or something out there before.
It was about an hour and 40 minute drive to get out there.
But it was gorgeous.
Was there a chairlift that if you wanted to, like it was around there and then you were past some chairlifts, yeah.
I think I've been up that hike before.
It's absolutely amazing.
Yeah.
And you can see LA and downtown in the distance in the smog and it's just like all of that is happening down there and nobody's up here.
It's crazy, huh?
Yeah, some cool birds, some dirty bird species up there.
Pygmy nuthatch.
Really?
Bush tip.
Oh, dude.
I'll show you some fucking bush tits right over here off the 101.
Williamson sap sucker.
Mixing some.
Definitely not on the work computers though.
That's the rules we have going on around here.
National Geographic.
Oh, dude, I remember jerking off back in the day to National Geographic, you know?
Just a dark tit near a fire.
No wonder I ended up like I did.
That's a beautiful bird, isn't it?
Yeah.
Wow, that's beautiful.
Yeah.
Do you think, like, do you get a sense when you're up there by other animals that they know that you're a human?
Do they know, like, do they think that you're like an anomaly or like an abnormality, do you think?
It is kind of weird because, yeah, they're not evolved to know what we are.
I guess, you know, native people have been there for 10,000 years, so maybe that's enough for some of them.
Most of them run away.
they seem to understand that whatever you are it's probably not good but i've had birds but i've had birds laying on my head you know like Yeah, so there's some animals that seem to see you as something to land on, I guess.
Do you find that animals are still curious about it?
Like, do you find that they're curious a little bit?
Like, what are animals like, kind of?
They're mostly just minding their own business and trying not to get eaten by something.
You know, like you ever watch a bird eating, they're just looking up every two seconds.
Like, they'll take a bite and then look up and they just can't relax.
Yeah.
So I feel bad for them.
And then the migration, you know, like they migrate using the celestial sky.
So they orient themselves to the stars and migrate that way.
Really?
Yeah.
So they operate totally, their migration patterns, they base those after looking at the stars and seeing what's going on?
They know where the North Star is and they orient based on that.
So they have these kind of like tracks in their genetics, basically.
Some of them have it in there and some of them learn it.
But it's sad because all these cities and all this light pollution totally disorients them.
You got a couple of sparrows jerking off outside of Detroit for no reason.
Yeah, they got to move it along.
But no, I could totally imagine that.
Yeah, like how we're damaging like how we're like, we don't even realize the effects that we're having.
Not at all.
Yeah, because most people never would have a reason to stop and think about it.
Like the Twin Tower Memorial in New York, they have these two pillars of light that they put up around that time, I think in late September.
And that's right during bird migration.
And there's videos of literally hundreds and thousands of birds flying around and around and around and falling to their death.
And if they see a certain number of birds up there in the lights, they'll shut them off for a half an hour.
But just that alone is Killing probably thousands of birds a year.
So that's just that's the kind of that's a perfect example.
Perfect example.
Like we're doing something that we feel like humans are doing something that we feel like is honoring others, that it's you know, it's out of love and support.
And then even in that space, we're killing thousands of fucking birds every year.
There's a pile on the ground.
We're just trying to get to Florida.
Some guy's shoveling him into the ditch and all that.
Oh, sure.
But that's the thing.
Yeah, there's always unforeseen costs.
And I think anytime you can ask yourself, what is the cost of what I'm doing or what I'm participating in, you find you go further down the line and you realize things that you never would have figured out from the get-go and that nobody really talks about.
You know, it's interesting.
We try and think about that even sometimes this year with podcasts, like try not to sell like bad products to people.
That's great.
You know, we're trying like, you know, I'm trying to think of what else.
I mean, I think we try to affect the things that are close to us.
But yeah, it's interesting.
It's like as you it's so weird.
It's like you grow up, or I grew up anyway, I guess like I'm, you end up in working in a business or in society, and it's kind of built where it's like you want to, you know, achieve things or achieve your goals.
And with those, it's almost like you don't even realize the side effects that are going on or even the chain that you're, that we're a part of.
Like the whole system we're a part of isn't even, it's not working like very like copacetically with nature already.
Because we don't have to see the effects of anything we do now.
Like everything happens somewhere else.
Somebody else is doing everything to produce the things that we use and depend on.
So back when we were in hunter-gatherer groups, we saw the effects of everything you did.
Right in front of you.
Yeah, you couldn't eat everything there was because then there was nothing left.
Right.
Here we just kind of pretend that there's an endless supply of everything and we create so much destruction with people like Jesus Christ.
And nature.
Gianni.
Sorry.
Yeah, it's sad.
I mean, it's almost...
It's totally sad.
And that's one of the hardest things is feeling so at odds with the rest of how most of society works and kind of feeling like it really shouldn't be like this.
But you got to play the game a little bit.
Right.
You have to play.
Yeah, you have to play the game some.
You have to meet people where they are.
You have to, like, do you look at society as like, is it hard not to look at society as like, oh, well, they're bad people, these people that we are bad?
It's hard to not think that.
And that would just be an emotional, frustrated reaction, you know?
But I know everybody is in the situation they're in.
And if I was in a different situation, I would be, I would have, you know, less freedom to make choices too.
Yeah.
And less time to think about it.
So, but that's why like where we live down south, that small village where everybody knows everybody and you kind of help your neighbors out.
You trade bananas and oranges and stuff.
Yeah, teamwork.
Yeah.
We grow coffee and we drink our own coffee.
You know, it's nice to just, when you can do something for yourself, do it because it hits this kind of instinctual feeling we have where that was a part of our genetics, you know, to be.
Yeah, yeah.
Do you feel like we're far from that if we really tapped into it?
I don't know if we are.
If we are already too far beyond that or...
Like have we already become too much of like, you know, zombies, you know?
I think so.
Like, I think every other species gets knocked back down by starvation, predation, or disease, right?
Every single other thing.
And we keep pushing those things off, but we can't do it forever.
Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
Yeah.
I'm ready for it, man.
I'm ready for it.
Yeah.
Like, if I die in like a big, you know, thing that's crazy, it's like a, you know, a war for food or something, at least it's going to be exciting.
Yeah.
It's going to be a good couple hours of television, you know?
Yeah.
It's going to be fun.
And somebody will be filming it.
Yeah.
Somebody will be filming it.
And even if they're not, what an exciting, like, sometimes I think about that, like, imagine being in like a real shootout or a real like, you know, like you see Leonardo DiCaprio fight that bear in the remnants or whatever.
Yeah, that was very realistic.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's like, how great.
Like even, it's almost like just to feel that alive for a minute.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, I was talking the other day to this UFC fighter and he was telling me like, I've seen a picture of him.
He'd lost a fight or he'd come in second.
And I was like, man, but you still look like you had like gone through something.
And he's like, man, it's crazy.
He's like, every fight you go through, it's like you come out, even if you don't get the outcome you want.
He's like, you come out the other side.
There's a, you have new revelations about yourself, like at a level that you didn't even really know.
Yeah.
And that kind of stuff just, man, it's so enviable than like sometimes just beating this drum out here.
Not that our lives are bad or anything.
Obviously, you know, like, you know, it's, it's comfortable for sure.
But is it, I often wonder if I'm being, if I'm very much rewarded at like a level inside of me that is almost like a light that's getting dimmer and dimmer over time because we just keep throwing these like blankets on it, you know, I think you do good things, you know, for the single moms and stuff like that.
You've definitely had an eye for seeing things that you can do that are good and do them.
Right.
Well, that's nice of you to say that, man.
And I'm lucky I got, you know, Nick and John.
Everybody's super, you know, we all kind of, you know, Nick and I have similar backgrounds and some of that.
And yeah, but I think even just hearing you say that, like, you know, touch the things that we can that are close to us.
Because I notice what I do notice that I don't like about myself when I start saying, oh, we all need to be like this.
It's like when that's when we get preachy and then we just get disconnected.
Yeah.
It's so disconnecting.
It's like, yeah, if we're going to solve, people always point at the government.
Like, if we're going to, the government's just us.
Yeah, they're people that come and show us.
And they're just humans.
Like, if something's going to be different, we have to make it.
We have to do it.
Yeah.
It reflects what we said we wanted, basically.
Yeah.
So the problem is always down at the individual level.
Yeah.
But it's kind of nice.
It falls back on us in the end.
Totally.
If all these cities burn or if there's an electric outerage, and we're never able to get it back up, or something, you know, like immediately you really quickly are going to be your brain is going to be asking yourself, well, who am I?
Like, it's going to be a quick turn.
Yeah.
Who are you?
You know, what can you do?
And what can you do?
Yeah, you can't do anything that's necessary.
I'm going to Joe Rogan's, bro.
Hopefully, dude.
That's where I'll be, bro.
I'll be back there to skin him bison for him.
That's it, bro.
Yeah.
If something does go down like the power, you're right.
Can you imagine how quickly it would be complete chaos?
Yeah.
Nobody knows how to grow anything.
Nobody knows how to fix anything.
The water suddenly doesn't come to your apartment.
Nobody knows how to live like that.
So it's not going to be good.
And I'm not going to survive it either.
Like, I can grow some things, but not enough to.
But, dude, you could fucking, bro, let's be honest.
Dude, you could rear naked choke a swan.
If I can find one.
You can have fucking twice the chance we are.
Me and Nick are eating Gianni.
So he's built pretty well, dude.
You can see his ass in the movie Ma if you ever want to see that movie.
It's a pretty decent movie.
But yeah, for no reason in the middle of the movie, they make Gianni get naked.
I actually have a question.
So I feel like a lot of people all the time are like, oh, well, where do I start?
There's so much, like, I feel like I'm so behind.
Like, what's something that someone could start doing like every day?
Like, somebody could do something where they could further themselves to help the environment instead of just destroying it?
I think the Amish, like, you wouldn't want to live like the Amish, right?
I don't know, dude.
I like not having a lot of choices, bro.
Yeah.
Limited choices, dude.
That's a great point.
Yeah.
Humans do best when their choices are limited, I think.
That's great to hear, actually.
And if you have every new technology that comes out, the Amish ask themselves, what is this going to do to our community?
And they usually come to a conclusion that they shouldn't accept this new technology.
Wow.
And we should do a lot more of that on the individual level.
But I realize how hard it is.
Like, I kept off from getting a smartphone for a bunch of years longer than most people, but then I got one and I spent too much time on it.
And we're so easily falling into those holes, you know?
So people need to spend time outside.
Like, people need to get away from light pollution and noise pollution and just get to a quiet place and sit there and think a little bit.
So many of our politicians and stuff who are making big decisions that affect everybody, most of them have never been to a wilderness area.
Like they don't even know what it is to be a human animal.
They just know like what it is to be living in modern society and think that that's how everything has to be, you know?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's so funny even here in, like, it's making me think like we think that so much.
Like, even just being in LA for a while, you start to think that everybody's similar to you, that everybody's like you.
Which probably makes you have some desire to be different, which makes a lot of people act freakishly, probably.
Yeah, I don't know, man.
Maybe not.
Maybe.
I mean, you might be right.
I was listening to you, but I couldn't process what you were saying.
And that's probably my...
It's...
There's nothing I can do, dude.
Sometimes I'm looking at stuff.
I don't really know what's going on.
Yeah.
You know?
But you can also, like, But it's not our fault as humans.
It's like we're just humans.
If you're just born into an environment, it's nobody's fault.
Right.
Yeah.
Exactly.
So.
It's just like, I guess what type of life do we want to know?
Or what type of, yeah, what can like what type of life do we want to live?
What do we want to know?
What do we want to see the capabilities in ourselves?
Some cultures, especially, are very happy with just like comfort.
And then I think there's some people or not cultures, but some people they just want more.
They want something different.
Yeah.
When things are available, it's hard to deny yourself taking them.
Oh, yeah, that's the British, dude.
So we get blamed for slavery, but they really did it.
But yeah, it's so true.
It's like when things, and it's like, I wonder if that's just the story of humans, how we're supposed to be.
It's like.
Probably like a fallacy.
It's natural.
What we're doing is natural.
And even a bird, you set a nice little thing of bread over two, you know, two branches from a bird.
That guy's going to fucking be over there.
Yeah, yeah.
So once birds get these little, you know, they get a smart beak for fucking rap.
A coyote ate my fiancé's sandals the other day.
And I was kind of surprised.
Sexy kind of.
I was kind of surprised that a coyote had the spare time to be doing that kind of stuff.
Yeah.
Shouldn't they be out finding something to eat?
Dude, I'm telling you, it's hitting everybody.
Yeah.
It is.
Screet your comforts, man.
You're going to see a coyote in sandals a couple months from now.
That's interesting.
So when do you go back?
When do you go back into the great white north?
But you're so far up there.
Yeah.
You're so far up there.
You're close to Asia.
Yeah.
People don't even realize when you get to the north of Alaska, you're almost, you're pretty much practically Japanese.
A little bit, yeah.
I've been to one of the Alaskan islands where you can see Russia.
It's like 35 miles away and you just see this icy cliff.
And the native folks said that they used to go back and forth because the Siberian Yupik speak the same language as the ones on the Alaska side.
They used to trade ladies back and forth and stuff and now they can't anymore.
And yeah, so it's a crazy environment.
It's mostly treeless up that far north.
It's north of the tree line.
So you can see really great distances.
And yeah, it's incredible.
It comes alive in June.
All the little plants start growing a little bit and flowering.
The birds are all breeding.
Bears are fattening up.
And then by late August, it starts snowing again and everything dies.
And then September, it starts getting covered in snow again.
It's really life cycle.
You see a real life cycle on that.
Yeah, it's very condensed into a short period of time.
Wow.
And yeah, so once the migratory birds take off, then I basically follow them down to Costa Rica and get there and see them passing through.
So it's kind of a migratory lifestyle.
You ever seen one of the same birds?
Yeah.
Well, I haven't seen one up there and then seen the same individual down there, but I have seen birds return that have gone on migration and come back to the same exact places.
So, because I've done bird research in Costa Rica and you ban them.
You put little colored leg bands.
I've seen it on the internet.
They put a little sock or something.
Yeah.
And so, yeah, we studied golden winged warblers and they winter in Central America and breed up in northern U.S. and Canada.
So they fly all the way there, navying by the stars, and then past the breeding season, don't get eaten by anything, reproduce, and fly all the way back to the same patches of forest.
And it's a little nine-gram bird.
Do you think it's just like coming home?
It's just like humans?
Do you think it's some of that same type of thing?
Like you want to go home sometimes or that?
Or is it just more of like a natural thing?
They just that like they have to go right back to the same spot.
Like is there a reason for it?
They have territories, so they'll come back to the same spot and defend a territory even on the wintering grounds.
Some of them pretty aggressively.
And do they have gay birds too or not?
Be honest with me.
Yeah.
I mean, ducks especially are.
Oh, yeah, in the park all the time.
Yeah, and penguins.
Penguins are terrible.
If I was a penguin, I would be.
You're out there, dude.
It's a tough life, dude.
Yeah, you show up to shore and there's two million of them.
Dude, you're playing it, you know, you're playing a root in anybody that's freaking, you know, willing at that point.
Got a pulse or not?
Yeah, I worked in Antarctica as well.
So I've done.
That's the North Pole, really?
The Antarctic.
The South Pole?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I worked on a sail ship, a 100-year-old Dutch tall ship that took people down to the Antarctic Peninsula from Argentina and back.
And once we did a trip all the way over to South Africa from South America via Antarctica.
Visited Tristan de Kuna, which is the most remote inhabited island in the whole world.
Wow.
It's like 400 inbred people living on this volcano in the middle of the Atlantic.
400 people, only six last names.
Oh, that's beautiful, man.
Yeah, pretty cool.
And what do they seem like at a certain point?
Do they seem really like in tune with what's going on?
Are they just like five-armed and just, you know, hoping for the best?
It's pretty weird.
They weren't even on a monetary system until 1960.
So they were just bartering and stuff.
And every family has like a couple of sheep and a cow and a certain size piece of land on the side of this volcano.
Wow.
They were nice people, but you could tell that after being there a couple days, they're kind of ready for you to get out of there.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Because you kind of what?
You upset the flow a little bit?
Yeah, just maybe just because, like we're talking about, you're supposed to know everybody in your immediate sphere.
And then you have this ship sailing up and a bunch of scruffy people from Holland and stuff coming up and taking pictures of everything.
I don't know.
It's probably a little off-putting.
Yeah, I could imagine.
I'd like to go over there and we could do a group trip.
You know, do a work trip.
Yeah.
You have to sail there or take a boat there.
Like, there's no other way to get there because it's too far for anyone.
And when you pull up, like, what are these people doing?
I mean, they're all, I mean, like you say, it's very tribal, huh?
It's not really tribal.
Like, they're.
They're all one group.
Yeah, yeah, but it's not native people.
That's the weird thing.
They're all descended from sealers and whalers who shipwrecked there.
So there's Italian descent, English descent.
They have this kind of weird British accent.
It's really weird.
Are they chicks or not, be honest?
I didn't see anybody like that.
My last question for you are this, my last thing I want to think about that everybody, you know, it's obviously a big topic, always global warming, you know.
Like, do you, what are your thoughts, man?
Do you feel like we are ruining things?
Do you feel like that it's just the flow of things, that, you know, that there's a cycle?
Like, what's some of your vibe from being up there on some of the front lines of just seeing what's happening?
Yeah, where I work, there's a lot of people studying climate change.
And yeah, it's very clear that it's happening.
And of course, it's because of us, like, at least to a certain extent, like the amount of people on the earth burning things and using up resources, like there's no way that that wouldn't affect things.
So, but to me, that's kind of like it's a big concern.
But even if we fixed that, we'd still not be really getting anywhere as far as I'm concerned.
And do you see, like, a lot of the people that are out there doing research and that kind of stuff, do you trust all the research that they're doing?
Like, sometimes it just seems like, I mean, people these days, especially, you can create any belief you want.
And I'm not denying climate or anything like that.
I'm saying, like, but, you know, people can create anything they want.
Everybody has a technology to create any story that they want to.
Do you see some of that?
Like, some of it seems like kind of motivated in negative ways?
Or do you feel like it's honest, just research, like people want to know what's going on?
I think the research is pretty honest, trying to document what's going on, but you definitely see people studying things that they know they'll be able to get funding for.
Yeah.
Because even if your idea is too obtuse sometimes, though it could be more helpful, a government agency is, I'm not going to get the funding for that.
Exactly.
It's going to sound crazy to them.
Wow.
But it's a great place.
And there's up to 150 people there during the peak of the summer.
There's only about three people there during the winter most of the time.
Just three people losing it.
And a little bit of murder every now and then.
No, there's never been any real.
That's the thing is like, I don't know.
We look back at hunter-gatherer people or small groups of people and think that it was all violence all the time.
It really wasn't.
Like it was occasional skirmishes with neighboring groups and stuff.
But like it wasn't that bad.
There was high infant mortality.
But if you made it through that, you generally lived a pretty normal lifespan.
Yeah, babies die, especially if you got an open fire going on.
Babies are risky.
And they would let them crawl into it.
It's crazy.
Just to see what the gods wanted.
Yeah, or just to let the strong survive.
That's crazy.
It's just different values.
It's like one of those Tony Robbins things.
It's just different value systems that we can't imagine taking part in.
But if we were born there, we'd think it's totally normal.
Right.
You know what's sad almost?
I almost almost feel like a little bit, not embarrassed, I guess, talking to you a little bit, but like, I almost feel a little ashamed of our own existence a little bit.
Not from you as a person, but just like thinking about that because you never think about it.
Like you never really.
I don't know.
Or I don't anyway.
A lot of people might, and I wish I did more.
And I think you actually reached out to me originally saying, hey, man, you should go on some hikes.
I think that's how we kind of crossed paths.
Is that right?
Yeah, I called in with a swan call.
Oh, that's right.
Okay.
Because then I know we've communicated every mail.
You've sent me some very beautiful pictures, and we're going to put some of those up throughout the episode.
And like, just kind of filling me in, like, every now and then I'll get an email just letting me know what's going on.
Pot full of iguana meat.
With some crazy birds, yeah.
I'm like, okay.
And I'll tell somebody next to me and they don't give a fuck.
Right.
Yeah.
They do not care.
But yeah.
Yeah.
You shouldn't feel embarrassed or anything like, I know.
You have to feel ashamed a little bit as a human.
There's a little bit of that that starts up.
Yeah, but that's good.
I think we should all have a little bit of that because we at the expense or what we demand for our like standard of living creates a lot of destruction.
So we should be ashamed of it.
We should be aware.
We should do some work to become aware of our effects on the world because just to be a good neighbor to other things, you know?
Yeah.
That would be nice.
But I know it sounds preachy.
And I know that most people are just getting up and having to work and don't have the time to think about that stuff.
It sounds hopeful, though, also, I think, in a little bit.
I don't think it sounds preachy.
I don't think you sound preachy at all.
I think it sounds like studied and hopeful.
I'm not hopeful.
Right.
At all.
Maybe I want you to be.
I wish, man.
Yeah.
Damn, bro.
Just when you fly into LAX, man, like, I'm not asking you to have hope around here.
Okay.
But no, look, it's like, especially here, like, you know, everybody look, people here look down.
They have no empathy for like people in other parts of like, especially America, smaller towns, where people are like, what do they do?
All they're doing is like having a trying to have a good life, be loving more to their neighbor, and not get overwhelmed with things that don't kind of make their spirit feel good.
You have more people that can hunt, more people that can grow.
Yeah, I agree, man.
I mean, that kind of stuff makes me furious.
It's hard when there's some parts of rural living that aren't good.
There's the massive opioid addiction issues, but I think that stems from them being dismissed by everybody else and industries like coal coming in and taking all the money away and leaving people sick and stuff.
So it's not surprising at all.
Yeah, it's not surprising at all when people feel like left out.
Yeah.
And it's happening in the village in Costa Rica too, where everybody's being raised to think if you get out of this village, you're a success.
If you get a college degree, it doesn't matter what you end up doing or if you never see your family again, that's a success.
And we kind of did that in this country too.
Yeah.
and people are separated from their families, and it's happening down there, and it's kind of like a...
I think some of that could change, though.
I think some of that could really start change.
I hope so.
I believe that because I think people are starting to realize that there's just such a, there's such a with not certain parts of America, like LA used to control like what would happen in Hollywood and the media and that sort of thing.
And it's going away now.
So I think a lot of people who are dreamers or who want to be creators, I think a lot of these people are hopefully going to start to want to build up the places that they're from or the places that they live.
Because there's such a bottleneck here.
There's such a bottleneck in certain places that a lot of the best creativity never gets to be seen.
Even though if it were spread out a little bit more, it would really flourish.
Did you have any people believing really wild things where you grew up, like rural superstitions or anything?
Oh, yeah.
We have a woman we're friends with down in the village who...
Yeah.
So 40 years ago when she was pregnant, they had an outhouse out in the backyard, and she had to go to the bathroom at night.
And she didn't feel like it.
Women, huh?
Sorry.
Oh, yeah.
When she looked down after she peed, there was a fur delance pit viper coiled up right there.
And she said, it didn't bite me.
And she always prefaces this kind of stuff with, I know you're not going to believe me, but it didn't bite me because the urine of pregnant women is electrified.
So she thinks the snake was sitting there like just...
No, electrocuted.
I could see that.
Yeah.
I could see.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Dude, if something pissed on me that was pregnant, dude, I'd take the afternoon off.
Easily, man.
Yeah, I'd probably enjoy the warm rain sensation.
I mean, I'll just take the afternoon off, man.
I mean, that's really as dark arts as you can get.
Yeah.
Dude, you have to come back and let us know what's going on out there, you know?
Any warning signs, you know, of like any real huge flare-ups.
But I certainly appreciate you coming, Seth, and just talking to us about, you know, what it's like up by the North Pole up by Alaska.
And they never built a Santa or anything like that up there, right?
Yeah, actually, south of Fairbanks, there's a town called North Pole where they have a giant Santa statue and a sad little reindeer in a pen.
And you can go sit on Santa's laugh and stuff.
It's a little dark artish.
Yeah, and they're also, it seems like they're trying to make a statement with the reindeer in the pen, are they?
Or no?
Or is it just, it's a real reindeer?
It's real, but it's not a real good one.
It's looking pretty sad.
Wow, look, dude.
There's like 30 reindeer left.
Yeah.
But that's, you know, when you see animals in the zoo and they're walking in circles and stuff, I kind of draw a parallel between that and human society.
Like, they have food, they have shelter.
So in a sense, you think they're fine.
Right.
But why are they walking in circles?
Like, same with us.
Like, we're safe generally.
We've got food.
Don't have to worry about all that much.
Why are people so unhappy?
Yeah.
Because there's something that tiger who walks around the cage all day long is missing.
Yeah.
Same for us.
I like that.
That's a good thought, man.
We got to break out of the zoo.
Yeah.
But we also have to, yeah, we have to break out of the zoo.
We just have to do it.
We got to take enough food with us so we don't have to fucking choke a stork out.
But yeah, I agree with you, man.
Thanks for coming, man, and hanging out.
Thanks for having me.
I really appreciate it, man.
It's great to meet you in person.
Yeah, too.
Likewise.
Now I'm just floating on the breeze And I feel I'm falling like these leaves I must be cornerstone.
Oh, but when I reach that ground, I'll share this piece of my life found.
I can feel it in my bones.
But it's gonna take a little time for me to set that parking break and let myself on my shine that light on me.
I'll sit and tell you my stories just know the way to please.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm Jonathan Kite and welcome to Kite Club, a podcast where I'll be sharing thoughts on things like current events, stand-up stories, and seven ways to pleasure your partner.
The answer may shock you.
Sometimes I'll interview my friends.
Sometimes I won't.
And as always, I'll be joined by the voices in my head.
You have three new voice messages.
A lot of people are talking about Kite Club.
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So great.
Hi, Sweet.
Easy to you.
Anyone who doesn't listen to Kite Club is a dodgy bloody wanker.
John Main.
I'll take a quarter pottle of cheese to add a bit quarry.
I think Tom Hanks just butt dialed me.
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